It occurs to me that our legal and judicial system foster neither individual freedom nor independence. I tell this everywhere I go, and may have posted it here, but I'm going to tell the story about wild pigs.
How do you catch a wild pig? First, you find a clearing in the woods, and then you put food on the ground. The pigs find it and soon they will keep coming back for it. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they keep eating the free food. Then you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and keep eating.
Then you put a third side up. The pigs keep coming. Finally, when you have them comfortably inside eating free food, you nail up the fourth side of the fence. You've caught them. The wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught.
Eventually, they go back to eating the free food. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.
I always use this analogy when I think of people of color in the US. We have poor people here, yes, but nothing that rivals poverty I've seen in Central and South America, the Middle East, or Africa. WE GIVE FREE FOOD AND HOUSING TO PEOPLE WHO ARE PERFECTLY ABLE TO GO OUT AND WORK FOR IT!!!! The people who receive these benefits grow complacent, and think of this not as handouts, but as "entitlements." Then they become, increasingly, used to the free food, the entitlements. They sometimes spend generations trapped in the pigpen of entitlements, losing both the ability and the moral/social/ethical/practical foundation for self-reliance.
While there is an illusion of freedom and independence in this country, the reality is that as long as the government is giving people everything they need, they are destroying the natural tendency for self-reliance. In addition to making people pawns of the state (imagine living in a world where you believe your destiny is not influenced by your actions, but by the actions of an huge, impersonal, bureaucratic government. For those anti-theists, I offer that at the very least, the concept of God is personal!!!) -- but in addition to making people pawns of the state, it keeps them trapped. As we see, generations of people live like this: unempowered, helpless, hopeless, and angry at something outside themselves, never able to even conceptualize that the power comes from within. These are people more concerned with "getting something from the system" than with doing something with their lives. There is an attitude of "getting something for nothing," which is completely contrary to the attitude of working hard for the strengthening of one's character and/or for whatever joy or other benefits might be derived from the work. Our legal and judicial systems, it seems, are geared towards perpetuating this standard condition of hopeless, helpless, entitlement, and are determined not to dare risk having any of its less-than-privileged citizens run the risk of grappling unpreparedly with notions such as freedom, independence, or liberty. Those ideals don't really exist for everyone, you see -- they only exist for the privileged. Everyone else is trapped in a sort of shadow world. They don't truly have freedom or independence -- they only have some vague idea of the concept and spend their lives in a Plato's-Cave-like prison -- shackled in their pigpens, they never get to experience true freedom or independence. The most they have are shadowy projections, to which they've ascribed the forms and attributes of freedom and independence. But of course, they're only seeing distorted images, not the real things. It's impossible to experience freedom and independence when you're confined to a prison.
And so we see our urban youth imprisoned, sometimes in jails with physical bars, and sometimes in mental jails that never allow them true knowledge of freedom or independence. Because of this lack of knowledge, they are condemned to lives in which they think of themselves as less-than, lives that tell them their success is to be found on playing fields or in drug dens, but not in commerce, industry, the arts, or the humanities. (Unless, of course, you include the music industry, which increasingly perpetuates this same erroneous stereotype). And you can't blame the kids. They are being reared by parents who have no hopes or dreams, or whose hopes and dreams have been shattered and who haven't dared to hope or dream again. Where's the Freedom there? Where's the Independence there?
It's even more ironic when we consider (and I hadn't intended to write on this when I started, but it's even more ironic when we consider) that a disproportionate number of those who risk their lives fighting for our freedom are young men and women of color. Perhaps that's not the worst thing in the world. Perhaps it's not horrible for our kids to get out of an environment where they think it's ok to walk around showing their underwear and into an environment where they identify with being Army Strong, or where they'll want to be part of America's Navy, a Global Force for Good -- Around the World, Around the Clock. Perhaps it's not so bad for our kids to stop identifying with misogynistic thugs and instead identify with the USAF, whose mission is to Fly, Fight, and Win, in Air, Space,. and Cyberspace. Or maybe, just maybe, our kids will find themselves among the few, the proud, the Marines. Somehow, I think that if we embraced those ideals of the military, we might have a military that could focus on matters other than warfare.
Which would be a tremendous boost to our Freedom and Independence.
